Downshifting

[jhonny9546]

Hi! Reference -> https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/31/guest-post-why-is-it-so-hard-to-downshift/

ENTERTAINMENT ADDICTION
The urge to be entertained every waking second will be the first hurdle you will need to clear. Your brain has been conditioned to grow from exposure to near constant stimulation.
"If you’re not doing something, you feel like you’re wasting your life."

When I have "free time", and I am free to do nothing, I really feel like wasting my life. Non only that, infact, I feel also frustration, because I am keeping myself, from "running a race".
What's behind this mind process?
How do you change the "wasting your life" feeling, with a good thing?

[jfer_rose]

I’m not sure if I understand what you are asking. But I think your question may be addressed by the book I am currently reading, the Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price. She starts off by talking about how a lot of us spend a lot of our free time on our phones, social media, binge watching tv, and other forms of what she calls “fake fun.”  Too much fake fun can leave you feeling empty inside.

She argues that true fun is the intersection of connection with other people, flow, and playfulness. I’m only about halfway through the book but she offers exercises to help you explore discovering your unique conditions for creating more true fun in your life. It’s a great read so far!

[ixtap]

I downshifted after a bout of depression and never made it back to hardest worker in the room level. Do not recommend. Obviously, I still seek pretty constant stimulation, or I would not be reading these forums so much. But productivity doesn't really drive me, anymore. Peace and tranquility are much preferable.

[Raenia]

I haven't read it yet so can't speak to quality, but I have the book "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell on my TBR for exactly this reason.

[maisymouser]

I highly recommending reading through the Living a FI blog. I was highly inspired by it- recognizing what decompression can look like and the value of just slowing down. I would *gasp* even venture to argue that his blog is even better than MMM's and that he deals with the psychological elements of a FIRE mindset in a way that is more relatable to me than MMM.

https://livingafi.com/

Specifically, you might start off with his post "Detoxing, Part 1 of Infinity". But really you ought to read his whole collection, it's a treasure trove of wonderful observation and reflection.

https://livingafi.com/2015/05/07/detoxing-part-1-of-infinity/

The constant pressure and prodding of the office is gone, and without it, I admit I’ve felt a bit unmoored and anchorless, as though I’m utterly without weight.  This is the weirdness that I occasionally feel, pinpointed:  it’s a sense that a lack of sucky responsibilities chained around my ankles somehow makes me less grounded.

If all of this sounds a bit disorienting at times, that’s because it is.  But I also want to be clear that it’s simultaneously liberating and awesome.

I’m finally feeling something different. For the past fifteen years of my office existence, I’ve felt variations on a theme, and that theme was the mass and heft of work and responsibility.

Now that that’s all done — the working years, the accumulation, the (at times) desperate struggle through the grind, I feel utterly buoyant by comparison.  But what comes with that buoyancy is, occasionally, a brief feeling that I’m adrift on the wind.